Alex (20 page)

My stomach curdled at the thought. Her dad’s life was crazy ugly and she had to deal with shit that was probably a lot screwier than my shit.

Sutton opened up a desk drawer and pulled out a binder. Setting it on her desk, she started flipping through it. “I really don’t need you to review this, but if you want to, by all means.”

That’s when I noticed it. Her eyes weren’t really looking at the pages, but seemed to be clouded. Her right hand shook slightly as she turned another page.

In two strides I was at her side and pulling her into my arms. The minute they circled her, a shudder rushed through her body and her fingers dug into my back desperately.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t let him get to me.”

“Shh,” I murmured with my lips pressed against the top of her head. “You have nothing to be sorry for. You were amazing the way you handled that.”

With a stuttering breath, she squeezed me once and then pulled back. She looked okay…calm and poised once again. She raked her fingers through her hair and I noticed her hand was steady once more. “Thanks. I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?” I asked skeptically.

Giving me a genuine smile, she said, “Absolutely. I’ve got a hot date tonight and a bag of chocolate to look forward to.”

“You have just two pieces to look forward to,” I reminded her.

“Well, that will work too. As long as you’re the one feeding them to me.”

Breaking out of the reverie of my afternoon and brooding over having met Sutton’s birth father, I take one final glance in the mirror and walk out of the bathroom. Grabbing my keys and a light jacket, I open my apartment door and head out, my excitement over seeing Sutton starting to build yet again.

Just as I pull onto the belt line, which is the quickest way to her house, my phone rings. Activating my Bluetooth, I answer the call through the car’s speakers. “Hello.”

“Hey, Alex. It’s Cam.”

My brother’s voice is tentative, unsure as to how I’ll react. What he normally gets from me is indifference, because I couldn’t care if he ever called me again. We had never been close growing up, and when he turned eighteen, he quickly escaped our father’s drunken rule and never looked back.

He never thought twice about leaving me behind with a monster. Never bothered to check up on me. He calls me a few times a year to check in, see how I’m doing, but our conversations usually peter out after much awkward silence or one-word answers from my end.

“What’s up?” I ask, trying to sound interested. Maybe I am…a little. It seems I’m caring about all kinds of shit these days.

“It’s Dad…he’s in the hospital.”

Even though my father rained terror and abuse down on me, even though he deprived me of a normal childhood, even though he twisted me into something that only vaguely looks like a human being at times, a fissure of fear quakes through me at those words.

“What happened?” I ask, my throat rasping out the words.

“He called me last night…was a bit disoriented. I went over to his house and found he had been vomiting some blood, so I took him to the emergency room.”

“Same shit, different day,” I mutter.

“Yeah…just thought you should know. He’s stable now and they’ll probably discharge him tomorrow.”

“All right,” I say with a sigh. “Let me know if anything worsens.”

Cam is silent for a moment and then he says, “I was thinking of coming down to visit you for a few days. Would that be okay?”

My mind starts spinning. Cameron has never visited me since I became an adult and started playing major league hockey. He’s never even offered and I certainly never invited him.

Before I can answer, he adds on, “I think we need to talk about Dad.”

I want to say, “What’s to talk about?”

Dad is going to drink himself into the grave. This most recent hospitalization is his fourth in the last two years. He has alcoholic hepatitis and probably cirrhosis from the abuse his liver has taken. His doctors have told him the only true treatment—the only hope of slowing the effects—is to stop drinking. He’s never taken their advice.

It’s hard to worry about my dad’s health when he’s not worried about it. But again, before I can respond, Cam adds on, “Not to talk about treatment. We need to discuss what’s going to happen after…”

His words trail off and his voice breaks. He wants to talk about what happens when our dad dies, and the way he is going—seems like it could be at any time.

“Sure,” I tell him softly. “I’ll email you my travel schedule and you just let me know when you want to get together.”

We disconnect and I brood the entire way over to Sutton’s.

“Alex,” I practically grunt as he drives into me. “Hold up a minute.”

He doesn’t hear me or he doesn’t take me seriously, because he pulls back and slams back in just as hard. The feeling is so deliciously pleasurable, my toes curl up and my fingers dig into his ass.

“Alex. Stop,” I practically plead.

I’m not sure if it’s the supplicating tone of my request, or if he is surfacing from the almost drugged state our passion seems to induce, but he lifts his head—which had been buried in my neck—and looks at me with glazed eyes etched in concern.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No,” I assure him and tilt my hips upward so that he knows I’m totally digging the way he’s handling me. But I want something a bit different. “I want on top.”

Answering my flexing hips with a push back that causes me to groan, he arches an eyebrow up at me. “You want on top?”

“Yes,” I tell him with a grin. “I’m tired of you being in control all the time.”

In a move so fast I feel like I’m on a roller coaster, Alex flips positions, falling to his back on the mattress while holding me in place. I swing around and come to rest on top of him, with his hardness still wedged deeply within me. The new angle causes tingles to race up my spine and my breath to catch.

Alex gives sexy a new name as he raises his hands up and plants them behind his head, grinning up at me. “Do your worst, Sutton.”

“How about I do my best,” I purr, using my thigh muscles to rise up slowly. I pull up and just before he slips free, I slowly sink back down on him. The amused grin on his face slides off and his eyes flutter closed as he grits his teeth.

“Fuck, that feels good,” he says in an almost griping fashion.

Resting the palms of my hands on his rock-hard stomach for leverage, I rise up again slowly, and push back down with equal force. He rewards me with a groan and so I do it again.

And again.

And again.

I keep it slow as I watch his face register how pleasurable he is finding this.

“Go faster,” he begs me as his hands come out from behind his head and grasp on to my thighs. He gives a slight push as I move upward, seemingly helping me along. When I start to slide back down slowly, he tries to push me along but I resist, my thigh muscles quaking against the force he’s exerting.

When he is in as deep as he can go, his gaze pins me intensely. “Come on, Sutton. Quit playing around.”

I smile at him and push his hands off my legs. “You want it harder?”

“God, yes.”

“Faster?”

“Yes!”

“No,” I tell him emphatically and his eyes flare wide at my denial. “I’m in control now, so just lie back and leave me be.”

Challenge burns within his blue eyes as he raises his head slightly from the pillow, and I can sense he is on the verge of flipping us back over so he can take control.

I give him a warning look and say, “Don’t even think about it.”

The defiance reverberates off him but he doesn’t move a muscle, other than to lay his head back down and give me a tight smile. He doesn’t say a word but brings his hands back up to rest on my thighs. His touch is light and acquiescent, born more of a need to just touch me rather than to be in control, and that makes my heart squeeze in contentment.

When Alex picked me up for dinner tonight, I sensed that something was wrong. He was distracted, his mind definitely on something more than me or the delicious Peruvian food we were eating. I asked him twice if there was something wrong and he gave me an apologetic smile and assured me he was fine…just thinking about an upcoming game against a highly ranked opponent. I didn’t buy it for a second, but the second time he refused to give me any intel, I decided to drop it.

After dinner, Alex said he didn’t feel like seeing a movie, and frankly, neither did I. It had been five days since we were last together and when I wasn’t worried about his distraction during dinner, I was fantasizing about all of the wicked things he would do to me once we got in bed. I had never in my life thought about sex as much as I did with Alex. It made me feel shallow, at times, because I feared that perhaps I was enamored of Alex only because he was a god in between the sheets. But no…there were plenty of other things about Alex that I was enamored of.

I think about the kindness with which he treated Glenn, or how he pulled me into his arms earlier today when Cosmo got the better of me. I think of how he is enjoying the game of hockey after hating it so long and the patience with which he teaches me about it. The way he looks at me, the softness of his touch. The way he bribes Minnie with subtle flirting and mums so that he can squeeze into my schedule to see me. Yes, Alex Crossman is a self-proclaimed asshole, and he’s warned me that he will hurt me.

But he hasn’t yet.

So far he has done nothing but make my blood race, my heart thump madly and my soul sigh with contentment.

The softness of the feelings I have right now for Alex demand that I continue the slow pace I’ve set while on top of him. We have always been “balls to the wall” when we’ve had sex—Alex’s characterization, not mine. We get so consumed with lust and sensation that we are always striving to go harder, faster, longer. Our movements are always frenzied and the talk filthy. It’s exciting but even more, it’s intensely intimate.

But right now, I want to see if we are still as combustible at a different speed.

Scraping my nails along the skin of his stomach, I ride Alex with long pulls against his cock, and every time I sink back down onto him, he gives me a groan of approval. His fingertips slightly dig into my skin but he doesn’t try to hurry me again. He capitulates, even closing his eyes so he can privately savor the sensations I’m providing.

I watch him carefully. I notice the pace of his breathing, the flex of his muscles, the sounds coming from those beautiful lips of his. It’s all a wonder to me…to have this time to savor the beauty of Alex. To be the one solely responsible for the orgasm that I’m going to give him.

The thought of bringing him to a slow completion turns me on greatly. I’m searching for release myself and I can tell Alex is getting closer by the way his muscles have stiffened along his jaw and neckline and the rawness of his breathing.

Tingles spark low in my belly as my own climax starts to break free, and I have to make myself keep the pace slow. My own nature wants to propel me faster, because Alex and I are best when we are wildly out of control.

Yet this pace feels right too, and I want to prove that it will feel just as good when we come slowly…silently.

“Baby,” I whisper and Alex opens his eyes. They are dark, clouded with quiet passion and they take a moment to focus. “I want you to come hard for me.”

He groans at my request and his eyes squeeze shut again. He gives me no warning as his hands reach under my ass and he pushes me upward so suddenly that I have to grasp onto his biceps to steady myself. Then he pulls me down hard—so hard that he hits something deeper than I’ve ever felt before and I let out a curse of pleasure.

Then Alex just holds me in place and flexes his hips upward, holding his breath as he starts to come. Watching the extreme release of pleasure on his face is my undoing and my orgasm breaks free. Throwing my head back, my heart is filled with immense tenderness over this experience. I swallow the cry that wants to release because I don’t want to drown out the other quiet sensations we are experiencing together right now.

A low moan from Alex starts to work loose and my breath releases in an explosive gasp, both of our bodies shuddering so very quietly in relief.

I don’t collapse forward onto Alex even though my body is thoroughly exhausted. Instead, I stay sitting up ramrod straight, his cock still hard inside of me, and I watch him.

His chest rises up and down in short bursts and his pulse is hammering at the base of his throat. His eyes open slowly and he stares at me, almost blankly, for a moment. Then my heart drops a little when I see a touch of fear glaze over him. He shares it with me for just a second, so briefly that perhaps I imagined it, but then his hands grip my hips and he lifts me off of him, rolling me to the side so that I’m lying on the mattress. He rolls right over the top of me and I think it’s a move so he can settle back in between my legs to kiss me, but he keeps on rolling, right off the bed.

“I need to use the bathroom,” he mutters and doesn’t look back at me as he steps out of my bedroom and into the hallway.

It’s contagious…fear.

It takes root in my heart and then zips outward through my veins and arteries, until I’m completely suffused with it. While Alex and I have always been intense in our passion, there has always—always—been cuddling after, usually followed by quiet talk. He’s never just left me so suddenly, so coldly.

Clearly this experience was moving to him in a way that was different from the way it was moving to me. It was possibly too intimate for him, or maybe my ability to give him a good orgasm just plain sucks. Maybe I imagined the tenderness of this experience, and Alex didn’t appreciate it. Self-doubt overwhelms me and I can feel tears prick at my eyes.

Swinging my legs out of bed, I lurch upward and out. I root around for my clothes and slip my underwear on—backward and inside out, I think—but I don’t stop. The slickness of Alex’s semen trickles down the inside of my thighs and the thought of it almost makes me want to cry in loss, because I do think I’m losing him. I hastily pull on my T-shirt and reach down for my jeans, when Alex steps back into the room.

“What are you doing?”

As I glance at him over my shoulder, he looks stunning in the blue light of the moon coming through my windows. He is all hard angles and rolling valleys of muscle. His nakedness, while beautiful, makes me feel uncomfortable for some reason.

I don’t answer but bend over once again for my jeans. Just as I grasp them, I feel him behind me, pulling at my shoulders until I straighten up. Then I’m wrapped up in his arms, the heat of his skin almost burning in nature.

“Why are you getting dressed?” he murmurs in my ear, and his sexy tone causes a ripple of longing to run through me.

“I just…I thought maybe you were heading home,” I tell him, although I have no clue why I was getting dressed. Clearly there was a need for escape, because the emptiness he left behind in the bed was freaking me out.

“Home?” he asks in confusion. “Why would I do that?”

I shrug my shoulders in response, completely unwilling to tell him all of my insecurities.

He’s not accepting my silence. Turning me around so that I face him, he wraps both of his large hands around my neck and props his thumbs under my chin. Then he tilts my head up so I have to look at him.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, worry evident in his tone and expression.

My fear tells me to keep my mouth shut, that any confession of my feelings will send him scurrying. But the part of me that is still wise to the world and has handled things a lot scarier than this urges me to be honest.

“You bolted out of bed pretty quickly,” I tell him in a firm voice, even though my stomach is tightening with unease.

“I had to use the bathroom,” he enunciates emphatically, as if he’s talking to a child that needs reassurance, even as a hint of guilt flashes in his eyes.

I know without a doubt he’s lying to me.

I open my mouth to call him out on it, but it’s suddenly filled with his tongue as he crashes his mouth down on mine. His hands remain around my throat, thumbs under my chin to hold me in place. He plunges deeply into me, carnally invading my mouth, even as one thumb snakes up and strokes me along my jawline. The frantic nature of his kiss, along with the tender stroking of my skin, causes my head to spin and lust to course through me.

It’s coursing through Alex too, because I feel him grow hard against me.

He’s distracting me—I know it. He doesn’t want to talk about the reasons he bolted out of bed. I decide not to pursue it because I’m immensely grateful he didn’t bolt out of my house. He’s back…in my bedroom, in my arms, and he still very much wants me.

Well, he wants my body.

Alex is so skillful in the way he kisses me—and my body is so reactive—I let him have me.

I let him distract me, and I choose not to worry about all of the ways that Alex still is not opening up to me.

As we lie in each other’s arms, I immerse myself in the feeling of security Alex is making me feel at this moment. Our bodies have quieted from our last round of sex, which showcased a very in-control Alex who was intent on making me remember the glory of frenzied lust.

He growled the dirtiest things in my ear while he pounded into me. He kissed me roughly, biting and sucking at my tender skin. After an orgasm that almost lifted my entire body off the mattress, even with Alex’s heavy weight on me, I almost cried out in relief when he pulled me into his arms and held me close.

He didn’t run, and maybe I was just imagining the cold shoulder from earlier in the evening.

I was getting drowsy but I didn’t want to fall asleep. We may have caught up on the sex we had missed out on, but I wanted to talk to Alex.

“Thanksgiving is coming up,” I tell him as my finger traces circles around one of his nipples. My head is resting in the cradling valley between his shoulder and chest, with an arm holding me tight.

“And this means what to a Canadian?” he teases.

“Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving,” I tell him firmly.

“Yeah, but not in November,” he argues.

“Did you celebrate it this year?”

“Nope,” he says. “Not my kind of holiday.”

“And why is that?”

Shrugging his shoulders, he says, “It’s a family holiday and I’m not close with my family.”

“Well, Thanksgiving isn’t just about family. It’s also about spending time with friends. So, you are coming to eat Thanksgiving dinner with my family next week.”

“I can’t,” he says with what I’m grateful to note is actually a bit of sadness. “We have a game on Thanksgiving Day.”

“I know. Jim-Dad noticed that when my mom suggested you come and she said we’ll just do Thanksgiving on Friday instead of Thursday.”